I haven't written in a month because I was actually on a wild spending spree with my hip. My last flare-up was, well, exactly a month ago and I knew with each passing day that I was due for another and like a rogue wave gaining momentum at sea my hip was going to crash at some point. I have really pushed my hip for the last month and its actually responded decently well to the stress. I have in fact done a number of activities which a sane person would find quite hard on the hips including two days of backcountry telemark skiing with uphill skinning of around 2 hours as well as some fairly regular skate skiing. I definitely could not have even thought of such things a year ago or even last fall so I was thrilled that this was even something I could attempt let alone achieve.
In Steamboat for Brian's birthday we decided to do a mellow tour on Rabbit Ear's pass and with some strange aligning of the stars everything seemed to come together to reward me for my patience in this absurdly tedious and exhausting Year 2 of the hip. Most of the climb was barely more than a nordic tour until the last push above treeline. But the powder was magnificent and I was grinning my way down the slope with five or six smooth tele turns the likes of which I haven't had in almost 2 years. I wondered whether this was breaking some kind of post-op rule considering I was barely 3 months out (ok, I am fairly certain of that) but I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't thought my hip was going to handle it ok and it did. Last weekend I tried again and was in a bit more pain but the climb was substantially steeper and we were forced to snowplow our way back through icy trees for nearly 30 minutes and that likely didn't help things. All the same, my friend Julie exclaimed, "I can't believe you can do this? This hurts my hips!" As frustrating as this whole experience has been I have to admit that I have recently been wildly active for having had bilateral hip surgery on October 29th. Sure, I've been pushing through some pain throughout the last month but it has been mostly manageable pain and not spend-the-weekend-on-the-couch pain.
Thankfully, the surge in activity happened to coincide with hearing from various elite surgeons that I was not yet an ideal candidate for resurfacing. Had I still been in miserable pain and stuck on the couch I would have been despondent upon hearing that Dr. Su thinks I should "give the microfracture more time". Interestingly, Dr. Gross said I was a candidate and offered for me to schedule surgery this April but also said I was not so far gone and he couldn't put my chances of success at 95% because there was about a 20% chance that I would still not be happy with my hip because when all is said and done its still a metal hip. I've long since accepted that I'm going to have a metal hip at some point so I don't necessarily agree there. Then there is the whole technical issue of having too much cartilage which could potentially mean that there is not enough blood flow to the femoral head from arthritis to allow the implant to properly grow into the bone. The absolute worst thing in the entire freaking world would be if I resurfed too early and it failed -- I would never forgive myself. If my resurfaced hip is going to fail and need to be revised to a THR I want to know that it was because I am incredibly fucking unlucky as part of that 4% whose devices fail and not because I jumped the gun on the surgery. Even if that means putting up with my psychotic hip for another year or three. On top of everything else, I'm also not going to give up our 7 day float on the Middle Fork of the Salmon this summer to be recovering from yet another hip surgery. If only I was as successful with hip surgeries as I apparently am with river permit lotteries!
Now that resurfacing is temporarily off the table the stakes are much higher such that every time I have a flare-up I can stomp my feet and throw shit at the walls but I cannot fall back on the comfort of knowing I only have to suck it up another 3 months until I can get a new one. I also cannot treat my hip as a short-timer and abuse it because its going to be retiring soon anyway. That is almost certainly going to be my greatest challenge. My fear of all fears is that I will push off the surgery and in the midst of trying to start a family my hip will fall completely apart again. But, as Willy Wonka says, there is no way of knowing which way we are going.
